The main message behind Ratatouille is the idea that “anyone can cook,” a phrase attributed to the film’s fictional character, Chef Gusteau. But I’d like to talk about the film’s other and more subtle theme, which is that food is a form of love. This idea is never directly stated in Ratatouille, but it permeates throughout the film’s quieter moments, and it is at the center of one of its most famous scenes.
The famous scene in question is when Remy, a rat who loves to cook and the film’s protagonist, serves the food critic Anton Ego the meal ratatouille at the restaurant Gusteau’s. Ratatouille is considered to be a peasant dish, one that would be surprising to serve to a particularly harsh food critic at a three star gourmet restaurant–it’s a simple vegetable stew consisting of zucchini, peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, herbs, spices, onions and garlic. Yet in the film, Remy doesn’t dress up the dish or try to reinvent it in order to impress Ego. He simply makes the meal well.
When Ego takes his first bite, he is transported back to a memory from his childhood. In a brief flashback sequence, we see Ego as a young boy who has just hurt his knee from riding his bicycle. To comfort him from his injury, his mother makes him a steaming bowl of ratatouille, which he eats happily. The memory is imbued in warmth. It perfectly captures the feeling that a good meal can give us. Ego is so touched by the memories that the dish resurfaces for him that he asks to meet the chef, which is shocking coming from a previously cold and severe character.
When I first watched this scene as a kid, it influenced me. I couldn’t put it into words at the time, but it showed me how food can really mean something. But it wasn’t the only moment in Ratatouille that communicated that to me – the film is full of scenes that display the emotional and sensory significance of food.
There’s the scene where Remy takes a lengthy bite of a strawberry and a chunk of cheese, fully savoring each flavor separately while his voiceover describes to viewers the unique tastes of each ingredient, and then combines the two in one bite to create a totally new flavor. My eyes must have spun out of my head when I first saw this. I was captivated by the animation that floats behind Remy’s head as he chews–the seductive, saccharine red loops of the strawberries, the rich, heady yellow blurs of the cheese, and then the explosive fusion of the two, a fiesta of color and fireworks dancing above Remy’s head, the flavors joining together in a symphony.
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